I switched fully to Figma in 2022. Here's what changed in my work — and where Adobe XD still has an edge.
The TL;DR: Figma won because of three things — collaboration, component variants, and the plugin ecosystem. XD still has an edge for certain motion-heavy prototypes and for designers locked into the Adobe stack. But for 90% of UI/UX work, Figma is the right call now.
Why Figma won
Real-time collaboration that actually works. Two designers in the same file at the same time, watching each other's cursors, leaving comments, resolving threads. XD added similar features but they always felt like an afterthought. Figma was built for it from day one.
Component variants. Before variants landed, every state of every button was a separate component. A button with primary/secondary, default/hover/pressed/disabled, and small/medium/large states was 24 components. With variants, it's one component with three props. The downstream consequence is huge: design tokens become tractable, design systems become maintainable, dev handoff becomes accurate.
The plugin ecosystem. I use 12 plugins regularly. Some of them — Tokens Studio, Lottie Files, Autoflow, Iconify — are genuinely indispensable. XD's plugin community never reached this density.
What I'd still ask the Figma team for
Three things would make Figma even better for the work I do:
- Real motion design tools. Figma's smart-animate is good for prototyping, but for production-ready motion, I still bounce to Lottie or Rive. A native timeline with easing curves would close the gap.
- Faster auto-layout for complex grids. Auto-layout 5 helped, but nested auto-layout still slows down on large screens. I sometimes catch myself manually positioning frames because auto-layout chokes on the complexity.
- Variables that work across files. Variables shipped in 2023 and they're great within a file. Across a multi-file design system, they're still finicky. Tokens Studio fills the gap, but native support would be cleaner.
When XD still wins
Adobe XD is not dead. There are three cases where I'd still reach for it:
- You're in a fully Adobe shop. If your brand team works in Illustrator, your assets are in Adobe DAM, and your animation team is in After Effects, XD's tighter integration with the rest of Creative Cloud is real value.
- You're designing a motion-heavy prototype. XD's micro-interactions feature still has cleaner timing controls than Figma's smart-animate for certain prototype demos.
- You're working on locked-down enterprise infrastructure. XD installs as a desktop app with no cloud requirement. Some clients (defense, healthcare, finance) still need that.
What this means for the rest of my stack
Figma being home base changes everything else. My Notion docs cross-link to specific Figma frames. My Loom walkthroughs screen-record Figma's prototype mode. My dev handoff lives in Figma comments, not in PDF specs. Even my client kickoff calls use a shared Figma board for sketching live.
The tool stack matters less than the workflow it enables. Figma's workflow is collaborative, component-driven, and plugin-extensible. That's why it won.
If you're hiring a designer and your team's not yet in Figma, that's a flag — not because the designer can't adapt, but because the rest of your design lifecycle is probably also stuck. Modern design is collaborative by default. The tool should reflect that.
If you're building a product and want a designer who works this way, let's talk. I'll meet your team where they are, but I'll push toward where the work wants to go.